About Erie's Erie Commons

As a follow up to last years success, Becky Coet and myself decided to continue with the tradition of giving back to our community! As members of Keller Williams-The Red Door Group, we always want to be agents constantly give back to the communities we service.

We have teamed up with the Erie Food Bank this year and are looking forward to delivering over 800lbs of food and other food bank items. With our community continually growing, we know we can exceed last year's donations and look forward to increasing what we can collect from the community each year!

This is such a feel good activity for us and we look forward to doing this each year!!

We will be delivering bags donated by local grocers by Friday, October 16th to have residents of our community fill them up with items from their pantry. We will then head out by 9am on Thursday, October 22nd to pick up the bags to deliver to the food bank. It's such an easy way for our community to contribute to such a great facility.

If you'd like to participate or have any questions, we would love to hear from you!

Email at: heidi@thereddoorgroup.com if you'd like to participate with us!

Can you believe Thanksgiving is just around the corner?? It's that time of year where most people gather around a table full of family recipes and mouth watering treats but during these difficult economic times, some are unable to enjoy this luxury. This year, Becky and I wanted to give back to the community that has given us so much this past year.

We held our 1st Annual Erie Commons Food Drive the week of November 10th and picked up bags on Friday, November 14th. Both myself and Becky Coet were like 2 proud parents when we started collecting on Friday.

House after house had the bag we had provided and some had even added additional bags to their donation. We couldn't believe how generous our neighbors were. We had a feeling they were wonderful but this event truly showed the spirit of our wonderful community. We even found out that Blackrock Elementary School and 9News were holding their own food drives so we had an amazing response even with the "competition". It was fun driving around the community shouting "there's one!" or "stop the car, there's a bag!" It was great. I even had the pleasure of hanging out of the back of her car so we could move quicker.

We decided to donate to Sister Carmen Community Center in Lafayette and when we arrived with 2 car loads of food, I think I may have seen the manager of the food bank's jaw drop. I wanted to just hug everyone that was there helping us unload our cars. Now I think I know how Santa feels. The community center was busier than I could have imagined and it was great to be a part of making someone's holiday a little more enjoyable.

During the weekend we received an email telling us that we had donated 799lbs. Becky even received a few calls after Friday which added about 5 more bags to the donation, needless to say, our 1st food drive was a complete success!! Over 800 lbs. of food in just one community, we couldn't have imagined a better way to start this tradition.

We want to send our deepest

"THANK YOU"

to each and every member of our community for their generosity. Our efforts would have meant nothing if it hadn't been for our community coming together to help others.

We look forward to continuing this tradition in Erie Commons and can't wait to see how much more we can help others during this time of year (and possibly others).

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!!

Heidi :)

My neighbor and business partner, Becky Coet and I decided to give back to our community here in Erie, Colorado by starting an annual Food Drive. We simply delivered donated paper bags to each home in Erie Commons and will be picking up the filled bags at the end of the week. We have had such a warm response already and people have been contacting us to come and get their bags, I'm pleasantly surprised to see how much people are donating. I have a hard time believing that one neighbor had 3 bags of food just lying around their pantry (which consisted of 3 huge jars of peanut butter) and have a feeling they actually went out and purchased items for the drive...it makes me goopy just thinking about that extra effort being given to help the hungry!! The picture below is just a fraction of what my family donated...

I'm so proud of Erie Commons for coming together to support the local families. We do our official pickup on Friday and are so excited to see how well our community has come together! I can't wait to deliver all the food to the food bank and be able to help the families that are feeling the current economic pinch.

So, be sure to be thankful for what you have. As Sheryl Crow put it in the song Soak Up the Sun, "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got." Be thankful for the things that you have and the things we often take for granted like food and clothing. If you can spare any items that others would die for, please give this holiday season. You will make a difference in your community and maybe even a family that you wouldn't be able to help otherwise.

Thank you to Safeway for donating 250 bags!!

And mostly, Thank You to Sister Carmen Community Center for providing such an amazing service!!

Heidi :)

Being a native Coloradoan, I've grown up having seasonal snow. From the blizzard of 1982 (I think, I was a kid so I'm not completely sure of the year), to the one in 2006, it's inevitable that we will get some snowy cold white stuff soon. Here it is November and we haven't had any snow (unless you live in the mountains). I have an alterior motive to wanting it...read on my friends!

Looking back on snow storms, they are the best way to have fun family activities. I'll never forget putting on my powder blue snow suit with this horrible '80's multi-colored jacket. My dad had shoveled snow for a good couple hours and the snow was still about 4 feet high. We had the generator running for some heat in the house and for a hot plate since the power was out. As a kid, this was fun and exciting (Mom didn't think so because she wanted to take a shower). To make the happenings a little more fun, Dad had a sled and decided to pull me around until he couldn't find fresh snow to make tracks in. I think he pulled me around for hours.

My latest fond memory is that of the Blizzard of 2006. We had only lived in Erie Commons for about 2 months, I was working at Nordstrom at the time and they had closed the Flatiron Crossing Mall (which I didn't find out until later) but my husband (who drove a truck) decided to go to work that day in my car and leave me his truck because it was safer, he's such a good guy. Little did we know that I didn't have to go in. Poor guy, took my car, was stuck in traffic for 4 hours on his way home in the horrible weather when he could have had is truck that I ended up not needing. Long story short, he got the car almost home but got stuck about 4 houses down the street ( I was so proud of him to make it that far in my little Nissan). It was that night that we learned about how wonderful our neighborhood was going to be. We had all the men on the block with shovels in hand, snow boots, gloves, hats, you name it, digging out my poor car! That same night, we all went to one of their houses for home-made chicken noodle soup and from that night on, we gather on someone's front porch to chit-chat!

It's funny how one event can bring people closer. We often joke that we live on the "East Side" of Erie Commons but everyone knows our street and how we tend to "gather". I never thought that a neighborhood could be so wonderful.

So, I say BRING ON THE SNOW because of what it has done for my family and the rest of the families on the street. Whether it's weather or something else, you should always take the time to know those around you, you never know what friendships could be hiding behind the neighborly doors!

Heidi :)

What an amazing weekend it was. The weather is beautiful, if I remember correctly, we had snow about this time last year. I'm hoping the sun stays out for trick-or-treating on Friday.

Saturday was the 26th Annual Eerie Erie hosted by the Optimist Club. This was a huge event! Over 600 participants joined in the fun. Many of the runners were even from out of town, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that people from outside Colorado knew of this great event in our great town!

There was also the Trunk or Treat event at the Erie Community Center that brought in a huge crowd. I wasn't able to attend this but the parking was insane. My neighbors informed me that they didn't have enough candy for all the kids and families that attended. I guess the town didn't realize how big of a hit their events are.

I also noticed as I was driving into my community the other day that we are getting our very own Walgreens and the construction has already begun. This will be such an amazing addition to our community. We already have some great services available from local business people but this will be filling in the gaps. We'll only have a 5 minute (if that) drive to get some cold medicine late at night. It will be great!

I'm so proud of our town, it is thriving beyond belief and I know that we will continue to have success in the coming years! I'm happy to introduce those of you not familiar with the area, you'd feel right at home!

Heidi :)